


still make sense to me

by salvadore



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Childhood Sweethearts, First Love, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:31:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5578594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvadore/pseuds/salvadore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone warned them it wouldn't last, that young love never does. That didn't make it any less annoying or heartbreaking when Zayn walked out and it was all over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	still make sense to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gebiurl (fookin_tossah)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fookin_tossah/gifts).



 

 

-

Zayn and Louis are seventeen and a little bit drunk on the night bus back from London to Bradford. They'd hoped to hide how drunk they are, but they're doing a terrible job of it.

Zayn had tugged Louis along behind him to the back of the bus thinking they'd be less noticeable back there. But they can't keep their hands off each other. And every time a passenger has to use the bathroom, they have to walk past Louis and Zayn kissing enthusiastically. A few of the passengers have coughed pointedly has they've walked past, by the third though, Louis was fed up with springing apart and blushing in response. His flipping off the other passengers is going to get them kicked off at the next stop, Zayn's pretty certain.

Not that Zayn can lecture, not with his fingers in Louis' hair, and his mouth pressed hot up against Louis' ear. Not when he's saying, "I _really_ want to fuck you," in a way that's more desperate and whiny than particularly sexy.

It must do something for Louis though. For all that Louis has dropped his head down to giggle against Zayn's shoulder, he's murmuring, "Yeah, yeah let's do that," when he's got the breath for it. He's also sneaking his fingers under Zayn's shirt. They're hopelessly in love, even if they haven't said it yet.

"Well aren't you two sweet." The woman who says it to them can't be younger than seventy, standing in the aisle and clearly on her way to the bathroom when she spoke. She's smiling when Zayn looks at her and he thinks that she must be a gran, probably even has a few grand-kids his and Louis' age. He's also certain that she means what she says.

Later, Louis will tell the story differently. He'll paint the woman in another light or maybe make up lies so it sounds like he and Zayn were doing something far less innocent on the back of that bus. But in the then and there, Louis lifts his head and Zayn can see him close off with a snap.

His cheeks are still pink with the alcohol and laughter, but the way Louis is smiling is all false bravado as he leans toward the old woman, as if they are speaking on something secret and says, “We’re not all that sweet."

 

 

-

Everyone warned them that it wouldn’t last. Often went out of their way, in fact, to tell them this.

Sometimes Louis found fun in it. When they were first turned seventeen and they started taking buses and trains to get as far as they could from anyone they might know, he’d make up fantastic lies about how they met to strangers. He'd talk while wearing this salacious looking grin, as if daring anyone to disagree. Hardly anyone did, but it was part of the show for Louis to look to Zayn for confirmation. If Zayn would protest, Louis would elbow him in the ribs until Zayn had dissolved into quiet laughter beside him.

It always ended the same, with Zayn curled around Louis, grinning against the junction of his shoulder and neck, and holding Louis’ hand tight. When Zayn would speak, his lips would brush faintly against Louis’ skin, making him shiver and blush. They couldn’t keep their hands to themselves at seventeen, sneaking into one or another’s houses so they could kiss and fuck in the dark.

“Is this alright?” Zayn asks the first time he has Louis naked in bed beneath him. They’ve fooled around before, but this time is different – it’s not the rush of half-off clothes and hands tight around each other’s cocks. No, they’d taken their clothes off first, nearly shy as they undressed slowly for each other. Louis’ cheeks had been so red, and Zayn would remember his hands shaking before he’d gotten to press them to Louis’ skin.

“Yeah,” Louis says on an exhale. His hair is long enough now to get into his eyes; he brushes it away nervously as he laid there, spread out for Zayn to see. He breathes shallowly, tries to feel more confident than he is. There’s a new tube of lube and condoms on his boyfriend’s nightstand, and somehow that’s the wildest bit.

It’s awkward, there’s too much lube but not enough preparation. Zayn holds one of Louis’ hands as he thrusts and the grunts that escape Louis’ lips aren’t of comfort. Zayn’s legs shake with the effort to not move too fast, hoping that the pinched look on Louis’ face will go away if they just find the right way to do this.

After, when Louis’ lip is bruised from biting it too hard, and they’ve given up and just jerked each other off, Louis starts to laugh. It’s the helpless, happy sort of laughter that has his eyes watering. He smothers it against Zayn’s bare chest, breathing the sweat smell of Zayn’s skin. And he prods at Zayn’s sides until Zayn gets with the program and sleepily lifts his arms to wrap them around Louis’ back.

In that warm, weighty sense of safety Louis thinks he’s in love right then, but doesn’t say it. He bites Zayn instead, just above his nipple. Zayn gasps with it, trying to keep from making a sound that will wake up his parents.

“You’re such a dick,” Zayn hisses, lips pressed against Louis’ hair. He’s got Louis’ hands trapped between them, but he’s already got bruises from Louis’ fingers and teeth against his skin. It’s annoying, and it makes Zayn want to kiss him breathless.

“You love me anyway,” Louis says. It comes out of his mouth like a taunt. He really means it as a question, chest aching with how much he wants Zayn to say those words first.

Zayn says, “Yeah, I do,” and only sounds a little annoyed and a smidge begrudging when he does. It’s no declaration of love, but they treat it that way.

 

 

-

They meet when they’re twelve. Both boys on a school trip with their respective schools to an Art museum. Zayn loves it. And Louis gets bored and decides to tease the kid from Bradford.

Eventually a fed up Zayn shoves Louis hard enough to go careening into a display to knock it over. There’s no real damage done, but both boys get punished. They’re left sitting on a bench beside the gift shop while the rest of the children carry on.

There’s a chaperon, a woman from the Doncaster group who is relieve to sit down and read instead of chasing twenty three unruly school kids around. She mostly ignores Louis swinging his legs so they knock into Zayn’s.

“You’re a prick,” was the first thing Zayn said to Louis, whispered angrily as he kicked Louis back.

Louis had laughed, kicking Zayn’s ankles especially hard in retaliation. And when Louis knew their chaperon was particularly distracted he’d lunged in and kissed him. It was off center and mostly innocent. But when Louis had pulled back Zayn reached out and held his hand.

It’s the only time they kiss until they’re fifteen.

 

 

-

The first year they live together is spent with them nearly joined at the hips. Zayn remembers most how red Louis would get when Zayn would hold his hand in public. And how Louis looked in his sweaters when it got cold but the heating hadn’t yet been turned on. Those were the best bits.

Louis remembers the late nights, how Zayn stopped coming to bed before three am. How Zayn would crawl in beside him smelling of the cigarettes he’d been smoking more and more of all alone on the shit balcony they had. He didn’t wake Louis up mostly because Louis’d be up waiting anyway. Louis found he couldn’t get comfortable until Zayn slipped in beside him, until those cold hands slipped under his shirt and those cold feet have tucked themselves between Louis'.

They didn’t have curtains for the windows so the street light would keep the room bright enough for Louis to watch his boyfriend fall asleep. Sometimes he’d chew his lip, gaze taking in as much of Zayn’s features as he could in the stillness: how the shadows made Zayn’s eyelashes look longer, the way his facial hair had evened out nicely. How Zayn’s nose ring sometimes caught the light if he hadn’t pressed his face deeply into a pillow. Louis wasn’t sleeping well either. They were nineteen and between university and part-time work to keep in that apartment, the one Louis would grow to hate with a vengeance, took all they had.

But of course everyone was right. It didn't last. That didn't make it any less annoying or heartbreaking. Not for Louis who was sleeping alone in their one bedroom apartment that he couldn't afford on his own. Or for Zayn who’d walked out with Louis’ last shout, _“Well fuck-off then!”_ ringing in his ears.

It wasn’t funny when they were both of them alone with the faintest of tan lines from their wedding bands.

 

 

-

They’re fifteen and Zayn has his fingers tight on Louis’ knee under the dining table. It’s meant to be a comfort, as Louis has been bouncing his knee through the dinner, head ducked down as he tries to avoid Yaser Malik’s eyes. He’d stammered through a conversation about school when he’s never been quiet or nervous in the Malik house before.

Louis had taken a bus up from Doncaster to arrive at the Malik door in nice trousers and an honest-to-god tie with his button down shirt. His hands had shaken so much and had sweated enough that he’d pressed them under his thighs and the bus seat for the last twenty minutes of the ride. He’d tried not to run his fingers through his hair, but it’s a wreck anyway.

Zayn had answered the door in scuffed up jeans and a shirt that’s seen better days, and hadn’t known what else to say but, “Oh hey.”

Zayn reintroduced Louis as his boyfriend and Louis blushed his way through an awkward dinner where, even Zayn’s hand on his knee couldn’t stop the shaking of his hands. Every so often he dropped his cutlery and it clattered against Trish’s fine china.

 

 

-

It’s just after Louis’ twenty-second birthday when they find the wedding bands. They’re these beat-up silver bands, nothing special.

“I bet someone ran them over,” Louis remarks when he has one of them in his hand.

They’re not shaped right, and they’re bent and scuffed in places. They don’t even match; one has a stone inset – something fake. The other one has a long faded engraving, or at least that’s what Zayn presumes it is as it’s too illegible to tell.

There isn’t a proposal, rather Louis says, “We should buy them,” and Zayn pretends it’s a terrible idea.

“We’re too young,” Zayn says. The words are logical, but they lose some of their weight when Zayn is wrapped around Louis, his hands in Louis’ coat pockets and his nose, cold from the winter chill, pressing against Louis’ throat.

Louis makes a face, more at the sudden chill than the adult-tone Zayn pretends at.

“We don’t have to use them,” Louis says. But he surrenders nearly immediately. “Whatever. It was just an idea.”

Zayn goes back for the rings after he’s sure Louis has forgotten about them.

There’s no fancy dinner or getting down on one knee. Zayn leaves a note on which he’s drawn them both in caricature underneath his quickly scribbled note, _will you marry me??_ , before he’d run out to class.

By luck, Zayn comes home with Louis from class and gets to watch.

Zayn stays by the door, leaning against it as Louis goes through his routine: kick off shoes here, toss his bag there, before stumbling over the uneven step into the kitchen. Louis finds the note when he’s done opening the fridge to, as is often the case, find nothing suitable in there for dinner. There’s a break in Louis’ chatter while he reads it. Louis cackles.

“You asshole,” Louis says, shaking his head. His eyes sparkle with a bit of moisture like he might cry if he wasn’t so quick to rub them away with the back of his hands. “Come over here and put it on me properly.”

Zayn is careful to make a show of it, does a sort of bow to Louis’ outstretched hand while Louis laughs with his whole body.

They can’t keep their hands off each other with those rings on. They fall into bed like they’re seventeen again, only just learning that if Zayn takes his time and slowly stretches Louis while he kisses and teases Louis’ ticklish spots, the noises that punch out of Louis are guttural groans of pleasure. And that he can get him groaning Zayn’s name if he gets the right angle.

Zayn fucks him face to face, with Louis’ legs hiked up high on Zayn’s hips as he rolls his hips teasingly slow. There’s sweat on their brows and at their temples already, as in a hurry as they’d been to get their hands on each other’s skin, things had slowed down after the clothes were shed.

Zayn looks at Louis and watches transfixed at the movement of Louis’ throat when he swallows, and how he arches into Zayn’s slow thrusts. His toes curl when Zayn gets a loose grip around his aching, leaking cock between them. Louis’ lips are partially parted and kiss bruised and he huffs out breaths when he’s not making more gut deep sounds. Zayn bites Louis’ lip.

When Louis opens his eyes he takes a second to focus in on Zayn. He grins when he does.

“Love you,” Louis says.

Zayn doesn’t come right then, but it’s a near thing.

 

They only wear the rings for two months before Zayn fucks off to London, as Louis will tell it. It’s a row about their ages, about what Zayn wants to do with his life. Louis hears only what he wants to – that he’s holding Zayn back. Then that’s that. Louis tosses his ring into a fountain when he goes home for a visit, and immediately regrets the decision. Zayn puts his ring in his sock drawer when he gets his new place in London.

 

 

-

Louis is still living in the apartment nearly a year after their break-up. He's got bills he doesn't know how he'll pay and a job that he hates so much he maybe cries about it alone at night. But moving back home feels like a step in the wrong direction so he stays. And he doesn't change the locks.

Zayn is there on a Tuesday, stood outside their building and smoking a cigarette. He's changed his hair, but the facial hair is there, trimmed and suiting the cut of his cheekbones. That nose ring catches the light when he turns his head to see Louis stopped beside him.

"Hey dickhead," Louis says. He doesn't mean to smirk with it, probably looking smug though he feels nowhere near that.

Zayn bristles, eyes narrowing the way they always would before a fight, and at least he can still piss him off, Louis thinks, which must be something.

When Zayn lifts his arm to self-consciously scratch at the back of his head, Louis catches sight of ink that wasn't there before he left. And maybe it’s that, the glimpse of a change that has Louis inviting him up.

“Well, come on then,” Louis says, leading the way.

 

It’s a while before Zayn says, “I thought it’d be weird if I just went upstairs.”

“I didn’t change the locks,” Louis replies. He tries for uninterested when he says it. But he’s put the coffee table between him and Zayn. It’s early yet but they’re getting drunk on the crap wine Louis had left in the house.

Zayn is lying on the floor. As Louis is watching, his eyes start to slip closed as he nods in response. Zayn drums his fingers where they’re resting against his stomach. Louis has to bite his lip to keep the urge to close the space between them under control. But there’s an ache in him that feels like it’ll only be soothed by crawling on top of Zayn so he can look into his sleep heavy eyes and trace Zayn’s lower lip with his thumb.

Louis breathes through his mouth, heavy gulps of air he hopes will sober him up.

It’s working, nearly, but Zayn murmurs, “I missed you, Lou.”

Zayn opens his eyes, and they look right through Louis the way only someone who has known you for more than a decade can. And Louis is suddenly back in Zayn’s bedroom, he’s fifteen and trying to sneak kisses even though the door is propped open by parental demand. Zayn’s lips would get so red, Louis remembers. And Zayn would make this sound like a whine right before he’d move; he’d roll over to cover Louis’ body with his own. It’s one of the things Louis has missed the most – Zayn’s weight and the way it felt, chests heaving together.

Louis’ throat is suddenly sore and it strangles the words when he says, “Shut up.”

Zayn doesn’t. He keeps staring as he says, “I’ve still got my ring.”

They don’t even make it to bed, at least not the first time. Louis does the crawling, and Zayn rolls them over to blow Louis right there on their living room floor. His mouth is warm, and he looks up at Louis through those long, dark lashes.

When Louis comes it’s with a deep exhale. Zayn’s breathing fills the apartment's silence, and under that Louis whispers, “God, I missed you too.”

 

 

-

Maybe everyone was right, all of those old ladies on trains, and well meaning family and friends: it didn’t last. But in the morning, Zayn is still there, with his battered ring back on his finger and snoring softly with his head on Louis’ chest. Louis is asleep with his ring on too. It doesn’t fit his ring-finger anymore, having seen even rougher days in Louis’ care, but he’s fit it on his thumb. And he’s got that hand held in Zayn’s.

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by "Mess is Mine" by Vance Joy. 
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed this, I really wanted to fulfill your childhood sweethearts prompt. Kicking around in my head is probably 10k more words about soft, impossible(ly in love) Louis and Zayn but this is terribly late as it is. ♥ Thanks 1000x times over to the Zouis exchange mod who has been unendlessly patient with me.


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